The Palpa valley near the Andes

It is most likely that these areas were used by the Nazcas as ritual grounds," says Dr Jussi Baade, Professor of Physical Geography at the Friedrich Schiller University, Jena (Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena). UNESCO designated the Nazca geoglyphs a World Heritage Site in 1994, declaring the desert glyphs a unique testimony to a long lost culture and a masterpiece of human creativity.